Parable of the Sower

About the book

In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful journey toward a better future Lauren Olamina and her family live in one of the only safe neighborhoods remaining on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Behind the walls of their defended enclave, Lauren’s father, a preacher, and a handful of other citizens try to salvage what remains of a culture that has been destroyed by drugs, disease, war, and chronic water shortages. While her father tries to lead people on the righteous path, Lauren struggles with hyperempathy, a condition that makes her extraordinarily sensitive to the pain of others. When fire destroys their compound, Lauren’s family is killed and she is forced out into a world that is fraught with danger. With a handful of other refugees, Lauren must make her way north to safety, along the way conceiving a revolutionary idea that may mean salvation for all mankind. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Octavia E. Butler including rare images from the author’s estate.read more

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Reviews for Parable of the Sower

Parable of the Sower feels like the ultimate coming of age tale. We watch the main character, her siblings, her neighbors, her acquaintances, and even her entire country come-of-age. Lauren is a 15 year-old daughter of a minister living in a dystopian world. Through her journal the reader is allowed to watch her spiritual questions turn into an awakening as the world around her literally crumbles into the sea. This novel was cautionary (how quickly everything was have can be lost) but never felt preachy. Even though it was essentially a book about the creation of a religion, I never felt that I was being told how to feel/act. Butler (and Lauren, I suppose) does an excellent job of allowing the reader to understand many different viewpoints through Lauren's family and the people she meets. No one seems like "the bad guy" in this novel. Everyone just seems...true.Even the negatives about Parable of the Sower (Lauren's inability to relate to others; Lauren's stubbornness; the sometimes unnerving pacing of the plot; the huge amount of characters) seem real in a way that artist usually choose to ignore in their work. Teenage girls are often introspective and stubborn. Life moves at unsettling paces. And we interact with MANY people every day, each with his/her very own story.read more

Content-rich story of post-apocalyptic America featuring a young African-American woman as the hero. Lauren Oya Olamina is a "hyperempath" who actually shares the pain of others in her own body. When her Los Angeles gated community is destroyed by violent anarchists, Lauren escapes. Dressed as a man,Lauren travels north meeting other refugees who, like her, search for a safe place to live. What sets Parable of the Sower apart is Lauren's philosophical take on the collapse of society: she is inspired to found her own community, named Earthseed, which will not try to recover what was lost, but instead will prepare for a new society among the stars. The novel is studded with pages from Lauren's Earthseed journal: Books of the Living:"Change is the one unavoidable, irresistible, ongoing reality of the universe. To us, that makes it the most powerful reality, and just another word for God.read more

According to the new religion of Earthseed, God is change, and the only thing that stays the same is change. In the post-apocalyptic world in which Lauren lives, acceptance of change is a valuable virtue and coping method. After her community is destroyed and her family is gone, she travels up north with a group of disciples, in a sense, to find refuge away from all of the destruction. In addition to the standard challenges, Lauren also has hyperempathy - she can feel the pleasure and pain of others, and there is plenty of pain to go around. Parable of the Sower is a very grim, but also very thoughtful, piece of dystopian literature, and a good readread more

Written in 1994, this is a book that predicts total breakdown in 2024. Whenever I read these kind of books I set them '30 years from today'. Butler cleverly works with global warming and water shortages, showing what happens to the very poor and those one rung up. We have no idea what the rich are thinking or doing at this time, but we follow the story of Lauren Olamina, originally 15 yo, for 3 years. I found this book lyrical and haunting. I read it in one day and dreamt about it all last night. I loved her concept of Earthseed and God is Change. I found the book and it's harsh message fascinating and want to know what happens next!read more

Post-apocalyptic literary scenarios have been a dime a dozen since well before Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, and these days it takes something quite remarkable - like Cormack McCarthy's sublime The Road - to raise even a flicker of interest in this genre from all but the dullest sci-fi fanboy. Octavia Butler's essay on the same theme is now getting on for 20 years old, and stands up well - indeed, it so closely anticipates McCarthy's novel that you have to wonder whether he was aware of it. That is not to suggest plagiarism, however, for the similarities are general indeed: an un-described catastrophe has caused the total breakdown of society and forced a family unit on the road, where they fend for themselves against allcomers in vain hope of a promised land. While Butler employs a couple of nice devices - the P.K.Dick-eque hyperempathy condition is a neat literary device - much better in fact than the hokey "Earthseed" concept which gets unwarranted prominence in the story - but Butler doesn't do nearly enough with it to make it worthwhile. In other aspects, the novel is a little flat. There's not a much in the way of a plot arc - it's more linear: things sort of episodically muddle along to a fairly uninvolving conclusion - and nor do the characters get well fleshed out or developed. Like her protagonist Lauren, Butler throws quite a lot of "seed" about which then appears to fall on stony ground: Lauren's father disappears, presumed dead but unresolved - to no effect. Likewise, Lauren's original sweetheart is introduced, developed, and disposed with for no discernible plot-functional reason. My hunch is that Butler was more interested in developing a quasi-religion than writing a science fiction novel, yet 20 years later, the post-apocalyptic road story is the only part that really holds up. But, all the same, it pales in comparison with Cormack McCarthy's bleaker, more eloquent visualisation, and ultimately I couldn't recommend this novel over, or even really as a complement to, The Road.read more